2023年经济学人 探寻蚂蚁残骸食腐动物(1)（在线收听）

    Like human armies, army ants spell trouble for anything that finds itself in their path.

    就像人类的军队一样，军蚁会给阻碍它们的任何东西带来麻烦。

    The insects make a habit of killing organisms, often much larger than themselves, breaking them into pieces and dragging the morsels back to their bivouacs.

    这种昆虫有一种习惯，它们会杀死比自己大得多的生物，把它们撕成碎片，然后把碎片拖回它们的营地。

    But they do not eat everything.

    但它们并不是什么都吃。

    Rubbish piles full with discarded bits of prey are a feature of army ant bases.

    丢弃猎物碎片然后堆成垃圾堆是军蚁基地的一大特色。

    Where there is carrion, there are usually scavengers.

    哪里有腐肉，哪里就有食腐动物。

    But little is known about which animals scavenge on army ant leavings.

    但人们对哪些动物以军蚁的残骸为食却知之甚少。

    As recounted in a paper in Ecology & Evolution, Christoph von Beeren at the Technical University of Darmstadt and Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University in New York, both entomologists, went to the rainforests of Costa Rica to find out.

    达姆施塔特工业大学的克里斯托弗·冯·比伦和纽约洛克菲勒大学的丹尼尔·克罗瑙尔都是昆虫学家，他们在哥斯达黎加的热带雨林中试图寻找答案。

    They found an entire ecosystem in miniature thriving among the leftovers.

    他们在吃剩的食物中发现了一个完整的微型生态系统。

    Tracking scavengers such as vultures or hyenas on the savannah can be done with a folding chair and a pair of binoculars.

    在大草原上追踪秃鹫或鬣狗等食腐动物，只需一把折叠椅和一副双筒望远镜。

    Monitoring tiny insects in a rainforest is much trickier—one reason why ant scavengers had not been examined before.

    而在雨林中监测微小的昆虫要棘手得多，这也就是为什么以前没有人研究过蚂蚁食腐动物的原因之一。

    But the researchers hoped modern DNA analysis techniques might make the job manageable.

    但研究人员希望现代DNA分析技术可以使这项工作变得容易。

    Working with a team of colleagues, they followed ant trails back to their bivouacs, finding 34 sites in total.

    他们与一组同事一起，沿着蚂蚁的足迹回到了它们的营地，总共找到了34个地点。

    The researchers used a handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up all the bugs at each refuse pile and brought the sucked up samples back to a field laboratory for sorting.

    研究人员使用手持式真空吸尘器吸走每个垃圾堆上的所有昆虫，并将被吸走的样本带回现场实验室进行分类。